


What Happens on an Uncharted Island

by LowTide1322



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Arrow Canon Compliant, Arrow Season 8, Crisis, Flashbacks, Fluff, Gen, It's all fluff, Lian Yu, Nate and Oliver would be friends you can't convince me otherwise, Not Bad, Oliver's kids are grown up, Some blood mentioned, Uncharted 4 Canon Compliant, and one year after Libertalia, author did not proofread, takes place one year after Panama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 10:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LowTide1322/pseuds/LowTide1322
Summary: There are a lot of things that happened on Lian Yu, like when Oliver met a young treasure hunter who was just... strange. And a lot like him.And, like everything else in Oliver Queen's life, whatever happens in the past is sure to resurface in the present.+Nathan does his own shit, and eventually he's too old for this shit.
Relationships: Oliver Queen & Nathan Drake
Kudos: 16





	What Happens on an Uncharted Island

**Author's Note:**

> I finished playing Uncharted 4, and after rewatching season 2 of Arrow, I just couldn't help but write this. I didn't proofread it, so I apologize in advance for any typos. The flashback takes place shortly after the season 1 finale of Arrow and one year after Nathan and Rafe escape the prison in Panama. The present is one year after Libertalia and during Arrow season 8 once Oliver's kids time travel.
> 
> (If you have no idea what Uncharted is, just treat Nathan like an OC.)
> 
> I'm not sure who else likes both Uncharted and Arrow, but if you do, enjoy!!

Oliver had been stranded on Lian Yu for 8 months. He, Slade, and Shado took down Fyres and the missile launcher a couple months before, and they were living in pretty decent conditions ever since.

But that of course _had_ to be disrupted.

He ran along the northern shore as a part of his daily morning routine, and when he reached the beach he spotted something sprawled out in the water. Was that an animal? He slowed his run to a jog and then eventually a walk. The closer he got, the more of the thing became visible.

It wasn’t even a “thing” at all; it was a _person_. 

Oliver cursed under his breath and slowly approached the body, avoiding the scraps of debris surrounding him. How had he not noticed that before? Maybe Slade was right; his eyesight sucked.

He could only see the person’s back, so he reached down and turned them over onto their back. Oliver was met with an unconscious man, maybe a little younger than he was, with crew-cut brown hair and dark bruises and cuts all over his face and body. Given that he didn’t wake up when Oliver moved him, he probably needed some sort of medical attention.

He needed to get Shado.

…

“He has a cracked rib or two, but otherwise he will survive,” Shado turned to Oliver and Slade, giving her final diagnosis. The man still hadn’t woken up even when they brought him back to the plane.

“Kid, you remember what the debris looked like? Was it a plane or boat?” Slade asked.

“Uh, um, I think it was a boat. How come we didn’t hear the crash?” Oliver replied. More importantly, why did the North China sea seem so accident-prone? He made a mental note to never travel by boat in the Pacific ever again.

“The crash could have been miles and miles away from shore. Like yours, Oliver,” Shado answered his question. She washed her hands with a bucket of water and dried them with a piece of cloth. “We’ll have to wait until he wakes to get some answers.”

The three continued to talk amongst themselves, but little did they know the man had actually been listening in on the conversation the whole time. He'd been waiting for the right moment when they were properly distracted to make his escape.

This was it. He sat up suddenly and shoved Slade and Oliver out of the way, making fast towards the exit of the three’s hideout.

“Hey! Wait!” Oliver shouted after the guy but he only kept running towards the forest. He didn't get far, though. Shado drew back her bow, and with a light exhale, she released the arrow. It spiraled through the air and hit its mark perfectly. She grinned to herself; she never missed. Like father like daughter, she supposed.

The young man stood with his back to them, his shirt pinned by an arrow to a tree beside him.

“Agh, crap,” he mumbled.

…

“Try that again, and the next one goes in your shoulder.”

Slade and Oliver shoved the young man down to a seated position. The guy only smirked and chuckled to himself.

“If you're gonna beat me up, just get it over with.”

“Alright, since you asked for it—” Slade stepped forward but Oliver put a hand to his chest and stopped him from going any further.

“We’re just trying to help you. What's your name?” Oliver squatted down so he was eye to eye with the man.

“Could've fooled me… you’re the ones who shot arrows at me,” he quipped back.

“They saved your life, so you’re lucky. If it were up to me, I would’ve thrown you back in the ocean—”

“Slade!” Shado scolded. Slade’s mouth snapped shut, and Oliver would have laughed at how easily she could get the man to listen to her. Unfortunately, they had more pressing matters to attend to. “What is your name?”

The man—more like a kid, at least, more of a kid than Oliver was—hesitated, and his air of confidence seemed to falter for a split second. But as quick as his smirk had faded, it was back again. “I’m Nate. Nate Drake. There, happy?”

Slade rolled his eyes. “This one is more peppy than you were, kid.”

Oliver scrunched his nose, “‘Peppy’?”

“Are you some rich brat who crashed his yacht too?” Slade gave Nate a “playful” shove that was really an actual shove.

 _That_ comment seemed to piss the guy off.

(Frankly, it pissed Oliver off too but he would let it slide for now.)

“You don’t know anything about me, where I come from!” Nate snapped. He seemed to realize he’d lost his cool and tried to throw back on his confident façade, but Oliver could see right through it. This kid was obviously in pain, physical or psychological. “I’ve never touched a yacht, let alone owned one. Not even Sully has, and he’s—” he stopped suddenly, changing the subject. “Are you going to let me go or not?”

Oliver remembered how desperate he had been to get home when he first found himself on Lian Yu. He still had hope back then that someone would find him, or that he would wake up and it would all be a dream. He almost envied Nate’s ignorance...almost. 

“This is an island,” Shado explained. “You cannot ‘go’ anywhere—”

“No, I know that, I just… Hey, what’s this island called again?”

“Lian Yu,” Oliver replied. “It’s Mandarin, for—”

“Purgatory,” Nate cut him off. A genuine smile grew on his face as he attempted to stand up again, but Slade grabbed an arrow from Shado’s quiver and held it at Nate’s neck. “Hey hey hey! Why are you so hostile? Someone must have woken up on the wrong side of the… uh… ground.” The three sent him confused glances and he waved them off. “Okay, not my best one, I admit, but can you give me some breathing room at least?”

Shado nodded to Slade, and he lowered the arrow.

“How do you know that it’s called ‘purgatory’?” Shado asked.

“Maybe I just know Mandarin?”

“I call bull,” Oliver crossed his arms.

“Okay, languages were never my strong-suit, that was all S—” he stopped himself again, but this time Oliver could see the guy was visibly shaken. Whoever he was thinking of, he lost them. It was fresh, too. He knew because he saw that expression on the rare occasions he saw his own reflection.

_Sara, Dad, Yao Fei…_

Nate was talking again, “I’ve been trying to get here for weeks.”

“What? Why the hell would you come to this shithole?”

The kid smirked again. “Don’t worry about it.” He clapped Slade on the shoulder, and the taller man looked like he was gonna chop off Nate’s whole arm. Well, he had before to people for much less. “I know you’re gonna miss me, big guy, but I have to get going.” Nate gave Slade a couple pats and then walked outside. Oliver raised an eyebrow and let out a laugh. If he ever tried to talk to Slade like that, he would get beat with a bamboo stick. The kid had guts, and Oliver didn’t really want to see him go.

“Wait!” Oliver followed him out the exit of the plane-wreck, but Nate hardly spared him a glance and kept walking towards the forest. “Whatever you’re looking for, we can help you. I’ve been stranded here almost a year, we know everything there is to know about this island.”

“Thanks, but I’m good.” He pulled out a leather-bound journal and flipped through the pages. Oliver looked over his shoulder, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. The guy had a perfectly drawn map of the island with all the notable landmarks. “Actually, do you know which direction the highest point of the island is?” he asked without even looking behind him.

“Why?”

“I need to find the monastery,” Nate said simply, finally stopping.

“What monastery?”

Nate laughed, and Oliver didn’t know what at. When Nate saw he wasn’t joking, his smile dropped. “You’re shitting me, right? You really have no idea. Did you ever even leave this part of the island? There’s a lot here, pal.” Oliver opened his mouth to reply, but he couldn’t come up with a come back. To be honest, he never really thought to check the island out. Then again, it was riddled with land mines and who knew what else. He just wanted to focus on surviving, thank you very much. “Never mind, don’t think about it too hard. I’ll just have to look for myself.”

At that point, Slade and Shado had followed them. Shado still had her bow and quiver on her back, and Slade had grabbed a machete and a gun. “There’s never been any report of a monastery on the island,” Slade practically spat.

“Yeah? Probably because it’s not open for business anymore.” Nate handed his journal to Oliver, who held onto it but didn’t really agree to, and started walking towards the nearest cliff-face. 

“Um, what are you doing?” Oliver asked to the kid’s back.

“I’m gonna get a better vantage point.”

“And how the hell do you think you’re going to do that?” Slade said, crossing his arms.

“Eh, climb. I’m always climbing shit, aren’t I?” Nate chuckled to himself. “I’ll be back. Probably.”

And with that, he started to scale the cliff-face with shocking ease, leaving Oliver, Shado, and Slade on the ground, gaping.

Who the _hell_ was Nate Drake?

* * *

Okay, Nathan swore after the whole Libertalia thing that he wouldn’t get chased around by madmen and guns, but of course he gets dragged into some mystical museum heist.

He and Elena had gotten an _awesome_ dig, and an even better find. They sold it to Central City Museum, but of-fucking-course it gets stolen and the museum won’t pay them until they get the artifact back. Granted, they said they’d pay double for their trouble, so it wasn’t totally a waste of time.

And that was _before_ they found out the artifact was actually some recipe that cooks up some “anti-matter monitor” bomb thing—whatever the hell that meant. But if it was some kind of weapon, he couldn’t let it get into the wrong hands.

Damn his moral conscience.

Sully was still in Europe, and by some miracle Sam had decided to come visit the day the artifact was stolen, so he and Elena had more help.

But, the three of them against an army weren’t great odds. They’d had worse, if you can believe it.

Star City seems to have no shortage of criminals, even with those wacked out superheroes that are always on the news. After tracking the weirdo and his literal endless army from Central to here, Nate couldn’t be less excited. The whole city just reminds him of his childhood with Sam after the orphanage, trying to survive on the streets…

He shakes the memory away. He needs to focus on not getting shot.

“Shit, Nathan, grenade!” he hears Sam say over all of the noise.

He rolls away from his cover to get away from the explosion, but that’s exactly what the goons wanted, apparently. A white-hot pain shoots along the right side of his head, and he’s blind for a minute. For a second, he thinks he’s dead—there’s no way he survived getting shot in the head—but the pain doesn’t go away. Maybe he just hit his head really hard?

He can feel liquid dripping from his right eye, and that’s when he knows something is up. Even when he was dangling from that damn train in the Himalayas with a bullet still lodged in his side, he never cried.

“ _Nate!_ ”

“ _Nathan!_ ”

He can hear his wife and brother scream, but his ears are ringing, and his grey vision blinks like television static. Frankly, he’s surprised he hasn’t gotten shot again, considering he’s on the floor and completely exposed, but that’s when he sees it.

A green arrow, sticking out of the guy that just shot him.

Huh.

He hears even more voices behind him, and he couldn’t be more confused.

“Dig, Roy, see if they have the artifact here. I’ll talk to these ones.”

As time goes on, his vision stops blinking and the color begins to come back to his world. Nate lifts a hand to his head, and when he tries to wipe away the “tears”, he realizes that it’s all blood.

All of _his_ blood.

“Hey, hey, calm down, it’s just a graze.” A green-clad figure with a bow and arrow is crouching next to him.

Ah, right; Star City equals weird superhero ninjas.

But this man seems awfully familiar, and Nathan can’t place who he is—

“Oliver.”

—until his two other companions say his name.

_Oliver Queen. Lian Yu._

But before he can say anything, Sam’s face hovers over his own and he feels Elena’s hands supporting his neck. They’re talking to Oliver and his companions, but this whole thing has been too much for Nate today, so he decides to just pass out instead of figuring all this shit out.

…

“Hey there, Nate,” Oliver says, sitting next to him when he wakes up. He’s in some bunker with neon green lights all over the place and some intense weaponry on display. He’s also laying down on a gurney, that’s… actually really comfortable.

“Oliver Queen. Thought the bow and arrow was for your girlfriend.”

“It was,” he says solemnly. Okay, sore subject. “Never thought I’d see you again.”

“Likewise. A lot’s changed for us since then, huh?” Nathan also realizes that his head is bandaged and hurts like a bitch. He grimaces as he tries to push himself up onto his elbows, but Oliver puts a hand on his chest to stop him.

“You’ve been pretty busy, I hear.”

Nate winces as he lays his head back down on his pillow. “Who told you that?”

Oliver smirks, slightly resembling the guy Nathan met all those years ago. “Oh, your friends—they’re out getting Big Belly Burger—your dead brother who’s not dead, and your wife, who nearly punched me when I tried to help bring you back here.”

“Yeah, she does that.”

They both chuckle, but then Oliver turns to him, serious. “Do you know what this is?”

He holds out the artifact, and Nate can’t do much but stare at it. “Do you?”

“No, that’s why I’m asking you.”

“Oh, I thought it was some kind of rhetorical question.”

“Well, it’s not.”

Nate scoffed. “ _That_ is a recipe for some ancient cosmic weapon. It talks ‘about anti-matter’ and ‘monitors’ and ‘cannons’ but I don’t know what it’s a metaphor for. There have been references in almost every ancient culture we researched, but none explain what it really _is_ . We had to go through some asshole’s army, _again_ , to get it back for the museum. But, I’m getting the feeling that shouldn’t be in a museum...” When Nathan looks up, Oliver is smiling at him ever so slightly. “What?”

“Nothing, I just think… you would have fit in great with our team here.”

“You’d probably do well in our business, too.”

Nathan’s head keeps throbbing, but he doesn’t want to go back to sleep just yet. He’s got a feeling that maybe Oliver knew something he didn’t, and he was about to spill.

“Listen…” the archer began, “there’s a crisis coming, and this artifact could be the key to stopping it. I have no idea how you found it in the first place, but I’m grateful you did. Now we can prepare—”

“Dad? Who is this?” A girl with blonde curly hair and a guy with dark hair stroll into the bunker.

“Wait, ‘dad’? They’re like, ten years younger than you!?” Nathan exclaims. Maybe he “exclaimed” too strongly because now his head is pounding and his vision swims.

“Um, it’s a long story,” Oliver replies, and Nate’s not sure if he’s talking to him or the two other people. “You should get some rest, you still look like hell and I don’t want your wife to beat me up.” The archer pats him on the shoulder, and even just hearing the word “rest” makes Nate want to close his eyes.

So he does.

“Also, I might need you to climb some shit, so I need to at your best—” Nate doesn’t even have to see Oliver’s face to know he’s smirking.

“Oh, shut up,” he waves him off.

He hears Oliver get up from his chair beside him, and he can also hear Sam and Elena’s voices coming down the corridor. And he wants to stay awake for them so badly, but he’s _really_ fricking tired.

“Thanks for the save, man,” Nathan slurs, not even sure if the other man was still there.

“Thanks to you too, bud,” Oliver mumbles, and Nate smiles to himself before letting himself fall asleep.


End file.
